State of Decay Breakdown DLC Coming October

Undead Labs have announced that the challenging new DLC for State of Decay, titled "Breakdown", has been delivered to Microsoft for pre-certification testing and will hopefully be arriving by the end of October. It might, however, be prudent to take the October announcement with a healthy dose of skepticism; as developer Jeff Strain himself acknowledges:

As we’ve said before, we like to be transparent about our plans, but things could change. Our test team could turn up some huge game-screwing design flaw next week. We might make a mistake in the packaging format and fail certification. The government shutdown could close down the internetz. Anything could happen.

So what's in this package? Well, the developers are tweaking the game world to keep up with those players that are looking for a bit more challenge. They are achieving this by scaling several gameplay factors over time to match the individual player's skill level.

As players advance in the game,

- They will receive more damage from zombie attacks- Stamina drains more easily, making it more difficult to take them down- The ratio of fast zombies in a horde increases- The ratio of freak zombies increases (including Bloaters and Ferals)- Resources become more scarce, though only to a certain point (to avoid towns feeling too deserted)- The number of available vehicles decreases

By adding these further difficulty tweaks, the developers are trying to, and these are the words of developer Geoffrey Card, "create a version of the game that gets so hard by the end, I can barely play it". I will leave it up to you guys to determine if that's a good or bad thing.